SHRED for EXT3?

[Mike McCarty]

Tony Nelson wrote:
> At 12:41 PM -0500 7/27/05, Mike McCarty wrote:
> 
> 
>>I don't want to lose *my own data*. I'd like a version of
>>shred (or something like it) which will "permanently
>>eradicate" the data in some files. These files are
>>(intentionally, and with this in mind) located in a few
>>isolated directories (and their sub-directories).
> 
> 
> ISTM that neither Ext3 nor Ext2 are well suited for this application.  It
> would be better to have a separate volume (any FS you want) that can be
> entirely erased at the end of the project.  As a practical matter, just
> writing over the partition and swap will be good enough.  If you need more
> security, use an encrypting filesystem, but still erase it at the end.

[snip]

Well, I was a complete newbie to FCx, and the people I'm doing the
contract with specifically requested FCx. I installed FC2 back in
October last year, and that was that. Other than preserving my
WinXP boot (which is another story...) I more or less let the
install do its own thing. So I have one partition with all user
data on it, which is ext3.

I have since gotten an external USB drive, and put all subsequent
stuff belonging to them on it. They paid for that, and so I can
just return that. But it also has some of my stuff on it, which
I'd like to wipe. Obviously, I cannot hammer their drive. But if
I just buy an identical one, and copy either their stuff or my
stuff to it, then I'm still stuck with how to erase the data
on one of the drives.

[snip]

> Using the *nix equivalent, loopback devices (man losetup), probably won't
> help at all here, as the writes to the underlying file would be journalled.
> There are settings to Ext3 that are supposed to control what is journalled,
> but I wouldn't want to depend on them for legal matters.  I have more
> confidence in partition tables not moving around much.

What you're saying is that I'm probably SOL, I think.

Mike
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